Mother Teresa should have been blonde

SUNDAY INDEPENDENT, 14 SEPTEMBER 1997

GOD BLESS MARTIN LOCKE. I can always rely on him to restore my perspective and preserve my sanity.

In this past week leading to the announcement of the Olympic bid result, I must confess I temporarily lost my head. Won over perhaps by the patriotic charm of a thousand Pick ’n Pay and Nedbank adverts, I allowed my previously unshakeable indifference to the fate of the games to be, well, shaken. Like a mugging victim who has fallen into the Randburg Waterfront and imagines he is being swept down-river toward the sea, I allowed myself to be caught up in the momentum and rainbow-coloured razzmatazz of the big day.

So it was that I settled down to watch the big occasion with growing nervous anticipation. I had all the usual Big Match symptoms: racing heart, dry mouth, a craving for harmful substances. I cared. I cared immensely. Then on came Martin Locke.

Martin is my perpetual reality check. Always obey Hot Medium’s basic rule of thumb: if Martin Locke is excited about something, it is not very important in the greater scheme of things. As soon as I remembered that, and as soon as Martin uttered the words, “Welcome to this glorious city of Cape Town. The heat is on, as the famous song says!”, I knew I was going to be all right.

Martin Locke is one of nature’s great survivors. Reincarnated countless times as a DJ, a magazine show host, a wannabe jockey and now, most amusingly of all, a sports presenter, Martin has outlasted his way into our hearts. His boyish enthusiasm is more vigorous by the day, his verbal buffoonery grows ever more endearing. No one can inject gravitas into his voice after a South African defeat like Martin can. David Dimbleby last week describing the procession of Princess Diana’s funeral cortège came across like Jerry Seinfeld by comparison.

This is Martin’s great gift. He makes us laugh, he makes us cry, he makes us resolve to wear skin protection when going out in the sun. More humble than Trevor Quirk, smoother shaven than Max du Preez, taller than Baby Jake Matlala, Martin is a TV man for all seasons. Love him, hate him, it’s no fun ignoring him.

Sadly, however, I couldn’t enjoy Martin as much as usual last weekend. Small, wizened, deeply tanned and difficult to understand, Martin has always somehow reminded me of Mother Teresa of Calcutta.

Mother Teresa’s sad death offers an object lesson in the politics of popular culture. Television viewers would have searched the channels in vain for the same elaborate memorials and life assessments that marked Diana’s passing. People can obviously mourn whomever they choose, but it gave pause to notice how Diana’s death was trumpeted as the passing of a great humanitarian, whereas Mother Teresa instantly became not much more than a historical footnote.

I was never necessarily the Mother’s greatest fan: I found her views on condoms and birth control somewhat perplexing given the sprawling mass of suppurating overpopulation in which she lived and worked. Still, if anyone deserves to be deeply mourned as a self-sacrificing force for good in the world, it is surely her.

The problem, of course, is that she wasn’t young, blonde and sexually active. What emotional problems she may have had, she kept to herself. I doubt she had a bulimic moment in her life. Mother Teresa did not live a soap opera, and the television cameras didn’t encourage an artificial intimacy with her. She didn’t have the same problems as us, so how could we hope to identify with her? Why should we even try?

How about this for the perverse power of the popular media: the vast majority of common people around the Western world imagine they had more in common with the noble-born Princess of Wales than Mother Teresa, the champion of the poor. I call it the soapiefication of society.